The International Society for Heart Research will conduct an international conference: "Aging Heart & Vessels: Current Understanding, New Research and the Challenge of Reducing the Health Care Impact of Age-Related Cardiovascular Disease" from August 3 to 5, 2004. Ageing has become one of the most critical issues for industrialised nations with rapidly aging populations. The incidence of age-associated disease (especially cardiovascular disease) has markedly risen to create a major burden on health care and social welfare systems. Despite major recent advances, cardiovascular disease remains the greatest cause of morbidity and mortality. Cardiovascular patients draw heavily on the need for continuing medical treatment, hospital and other community services. Notably there is also a major loss of quality of life and productivity for patients, carers and their families, and work forces. Such costs have enormous implications for society and their governments. Aims to be achieved by multidisciplinary participation of American and international leading researchers and clinicians: 1. Due to recent new data, to update our understanding of heart and vessel function during the ageing process both in health and in disease. 2. To examine and summarise data from human Iongtitudinal studies of ageing as well as other specific population studies. 3. To permit discussions of new experimental or clinical models of ageing or data from molecular biology to whole human. 4. To permit clinicians and other workers to discuss best practice, limitations and pending innovations. 5. To draw together clinician and scientist researchers to define specific problems that remain unaddressed. 6. To facilitate the development of new connections between cardiovascular clinicians and researchers across the world so as to precipitate new ideas, collaborative work and breakthroughs. 7. To give governments a summary of new research findings and potential for the future that may contribute to health planning and problem solving from community to nation level. 8. To publish the proceedings as a public record. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]